Geo Grid Driveway: The Final Chapter

Sorry this took longer to finish than I would have liked, but like all construction jobs, the weather is still the foreman. We had a few days (finally) of rain and then I ordered the remainder of the gravel before beginning the task of setting up the grid.

We had decided on the last day of digging that we didn’t need to go as far as we had initially planned. It turned out that the extra four feet would not add any benefit since the current length was actually already longer than both the Jeep Grand Cherokee and the Nissan Altima, so, unless we wanted to go all the way to the fence to be able to park both cars in the driveway, we were done digging up the lawn. We still had a day or two of leveling the inside of the hole so that it was at least 4.5 inches deep from the sidewalk along the right edge of the driveway. That would be our limiting height, since it is easier to bulk up the grass side of the driveway with landscape timbers than it is to make the sidewalk go higher.

Once we had the area leveled, we rolled out the landscape fabric. In hindsight, I would have rolled out two layers of the fabric, and then driven some wooden stakes or something to hold it in place. It only moved a little bit, but it was still irritating when it did. We then unboxed the Geo Grid and the stakes. I had ordered two grids, because my calculations originally called for a lot more than one grid would have been able to cover. But once we decided on the actual size of the driveway, one grid was actually enough to fully cover the driveway.

The Geo Grid was easy enough to manipulate and lightweight enough for one person to lay out, but I was glad my wife was there to help me with it, because I would have been cussing at the landscape fabric as I dragged it all over the place while moving the Geo Grid. I ordered a starter kit of stakes that includes the tool for pounding them into the ground and 2 additional bags. I could not find them on Amazon, so I ordered them directly from the manufacturer. After installation, we had enough stakes left over for the second Geo Grid if we ever decide to make a driveway for the other car.

Note: the stakes are actually very important for the overall installation. You are better off using more stakes if possible to avoid the grid floating up when you pour the gravel. I started in one corner and drove a stake every 3 loops along the right and left sides. If your budget can handle it, I would recommend getting enough stakes to handle every other loop instead. At $1.50 per stake, it adds up.

I was a little confused as to how to use the stake driving tool, but once I messed around with it, I figured out how to use it without losing a finger or breaking a stake.

As you can see in the video above, I almost fell into the hole while driving that particular stake… but it was pretty straightforward.

Adding gravel was about as easy as it gets. If you can get a load of gravel from your local quarry, I am sure it is less expensive than the $5 per bag I paid to have delivered from my local home depot. Pea gravel is way better than the larger stuff. The first 10 bags of my order had the half inch sized gravel and I was not really happy with it, then I realized that the rest of the pallet was the pea sized gravel, so I spread the bigger gravel out and covered it with the pea gravel. Overall, I had to use about 140 bags to finish the driveway.

As you can see from the photo, once the gravel was poured and the landscape timbers placed, the driveway looks nice and it is very functional. We already have the Nissan parked there and love the fact that the birds can’t get to it from the power lines anymore. Now to figure out a way to protect the Jeep…